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SUN 






















































This Booklet is the Property of 






Illlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll 


“The zJMaking 
of a 

P\(ewspaper” 

—By Henry Edward Warner 


A Description of a 
Trip Through the 
Baltimore Sun 
Building 


mini.... .. 







/ 


^/j/. 4-37 7 


V* V 
. C 1 


SECOND REVISED EDITION 
AUGUST, 1924 


Cl A 8 27110 



COPYRIGHT 1924 BY , 
THE A. S. ABELL COMPANY 
BALTIMORE, MD. 


THE SUN BOOK & JOB PRINTING OFFICE, INC. 
BALTIMORE 


APR -2 1925 


\ 






The Treason for 
This Booklet 

his booklet is a description of the making of a 

newspaper as illustrated in the publication of 
The Sun y The Evening Sun and The Sunday Sun. It 
is published for the information of all interested, but 
especially in connection with visits to The Sun Build¬ 
ing by students and teachers of public schools, high 
schools and colleges of Baltimore, which began sys¬ 
tematically in November, 1922. 

The invitation to the schools and colleges grew 
out of an increasing vocational interest among stu¬ 
dents of all classes. To know how a thing is done is 
one thing; to see it actually done visualizes the story 
and fixes the education. Students came, saw a news¬ 
paper written, set into type, the type impressed in 
matrices, plates cast and fastened to the huge cylin¬ 
drical presses, the presses leaping into life at the touch 
of an electric button, papers flying into the mailing 
room and being dispatched with feverish speed along 
the many avenues of distribution. 

They went away no longer thinking of a news¬ 
paper as a mere printed sheet with its value fixed in 


[ 3 ] 


pennies, but as an institution with a power for good 
or evil, and with a corresponding responsibility to be 
heeded watchfully. They told others. Before long 
organizations other than schools were heard from, and 
“Seeing the Sun” has now become an established 
part of the day’s work. 

At the date of this revision the story has been 
told in 18 months to about 14,000 visitors, including 
teachers and students of high schools and colleges in 
assembly. 

In this booklet an attempt has been made, in text 
and illustration, to simplify description so that all the 
processes may be understood by the average reader. 
It is, in fact, a memoranda record of the trip through 
the building, for those who have visited. For others, 
it is offered with the hope that it will prove an inter¬ 
esting description of an important * part of modern 
life. 

This second revised edition contains more detail, 
a chapter on the monotype machine and added illus¬ 
trations, considered advisable in view of a large de¬ 
mand for this information. 

Appointments to visit The Sun Building may be 
made by organizations or groups of individuals, by 
addressing 

The A. S. Abell Company, 
“Seeing The Sun” Department, 

Sun Square, Baltimore. 

[4] 


Before We Begin 

^Jhe little journey described in this booklet is 

through a modern newspaper plant, with all the 
developments of the industry in full blast. 

It will be well, before starting, to understand that 
everything in the plant is comparatively new. For 
instance, modern presses were not even thought of as 
practical until about 1875. The linotype machine was 
not invented until 1885, by Ottmar Mergenthaler of 
Baltimore. The Autoplate, without which modern 
newspapers would be impossible, did not come into 
its earliest use until 1890. Before these dates, news¬ 
papers were set clumsily by hand, printed direct from 
the original type, and turned out a sheet at a time on 
flat-bed presses. 

It is also well to know something of the begin¬ 
nings of journalism. In the latter part of the sixteenth 
century, Germany saw several periodicals born and 
buried in rapid, succession. Shortly afterward, France 
and England followed suit with about the same re¬ 
sults. Then, eighty-two years later than England and 
ninety-nine years after France, the English Colonies 
in America joined. 

Benjamin Harris, one of the earliest victims of 


[ 5 ] 


official opposition to a free press, had an idea that 
there were too many persons walking around Boston 
knocking the town, the country, and everything gen¬ 
erally. So on September 25th, 1690, he printed the 
first and only edition of “Public Occurrences/’ which 
was to have been a weekly paper devoted chiefly to 
the task of printing the names of all the town liars, 
and pillorying them in public execration. He in¬ 
vited anyone to furnish names of known liars, and 
they were saved from exposure only by his paper’s 
immediate demise, by order of the Governor, who 
saw terrible possibilities in the publication of incon¬ 
venient truths. It was a funeral that all the liars 
attended with appreciation. 

On April 24th, 1704, John Campbell, also in Bos¬ 
ton, started “The News-Letter,” and for fifteen years 
was without competition in America. Then the Bos¬ 
ton Gazette started, Philadelphia and New York fol¬ 
lowed with newspapers, and by 1740 there were eleven 
newspapers in the colonies and newspaper enterprise 
had started a publishers’ association. 

That was the beginning. No living man can pre¬ 
dict the full development of the newspaper. But for 
that matter, no living man can predict the full develop¬ 
ment of anything. What we know today is that the 
power of the press is a real thing, a compelling thing 
and a force that could be exceedingly vicious were it 
not for the fact that to survive at all, a newspaper 
must be essentially “on the level.” 


[ 6 ] 


Station “A” 


The business Office 

GDC'. are standing in the lobby of The Sun Build¬ 
ing. The revolving doors that followed us 
through, revolve ceaselessly. The entrance to The Sun 
Building is never closed, day or night. 

Until 1904, the year of the great Baltimore fire, 
The Sun was published from the Iron Building at 
Baltimore and South streets, which was the first iron 
building in the world, and was constructed for The 
Sun in 1851. The new building stands at the exact 
geographical center of the city, and is an architectural 
monument, intended originally to house one news¬ 
paper of moderate proportions; until 1924, compelled 
to take care of a combination of Morning, Evening 
and Sunday newspapers whose demands stretched its 
walls so that the adjoining building was purchased, 
and at this writing is being gradually occupied by 
Sun equipment. 

In this main floor business office, at the desks of 
the advertising force and behind the counter, more 
advertising copy is handled every day (certified fig¬ 
ures at the close of 1923) than is handled by any 


[ 7 ] 



A Portion of The Sun Lobby 

other newspaper in the world. Here, and in the Clas¬ 
sified Advertising Department, upstairs, are handled 
more columns of "want-ads/' as they are familiarly 
known, than are handled by any other newspaper in 
the world save a scant half dozen. 

In the center of the space behind the counter there 
is a Small cabinet—so small you can hardly see it 
from in front. It is an indexed invention for holding 
answers to classified advertisements, and about 3,000 
answers a day go "through the works.” 

The large brass equipment over by the rail is a 
pneumatic tube, through which advertising "copy” is 
shot upstairs to the composing room. 


[ 8 ] 









Showing Business Office 

It is not necessary to stop long here. A business 
office is a business office. But if you will step over 
to the right-hand wall, at the foot of the stairs, we 
will show you something of which The Sun and all 
Sun men and women are proud. They are three 
bronze tablets by Hans Schuler, tributes to Sun men 
who gave their lives to their country in the . World 
War. 

The central tablet was erected by The Sun Route 
Owners’ Association in memory of Philip Emil Wei- 
gand, a Sun carrier who volunteered and who went 
down with the Tuscania. On its right, a tablet to 
George Seri ah Katz, Classified Advertising Manager, 


[ 9 ] 


who died in service at Fort McHenry, October 8th, 
1918. And on the left, a third tablet to Robert 
Morris Armstrong, a Sun reporter who was killed in 
action at Montfaucon, September 26th, 1918. 




Memorials to 
Three Sun Men 
who made 

the Supreme Sacrifice 
in the 

Great World War 


Leaving the business office, we will follow “copy” 
from its beginning through all the processes of pub¬ 
lication, until the newspaper is out of the building 
and in circulation. “Copy” is anything written, 
drawn or photographed, which is prepared for publi¬ 
cation. It is the desire of the writer to explain the 


[10 1 




making of a newspaper in language free from techni¬ 
calities—to show as simply as possible the various 
steps in the assembling of text and illustrations, and 
their mechanical conversion into a complete, orderly, 
printed chronicle of a day’s events. 


Station “B” 

The Editorial Toom 

'T") ever mind the little elevator. The steps are 
handier. A brisk winding trip up four flights, 
and here we are in a long room full of desks and type¬ 
writers. The working space is enclosed by a low rail¬ 
ing, leaving an aisle which leads to the north end and 
into a hallway which is flanked by editorial offices. 
At the end of the hall, the executive secretaries; to 
the right, the office of the president, and to the left, 
the board room for the directors. But we are not 
especially concerned with how a newspaper is financed 
and managed. We are trying to find out how it is 
made; so we pass up the President and the Board 
and go back into the big room where typewriters are 
clicking. 

We glance into the editorial office. Editors and 

[ 11 ] 


editorial writers and executives may perhaps be seen 
in consultation or busily grinding out no end of fallible 
opinion on matters of moot. We are in the very pres¬ 
ence of Editorial Opinion, and it does not stagger nor 
confound us. On the contrary, the editors seem to 
be quite human persons, doing a day’s work very 
much like anyone else, and with no greater certainty 
that they will not have to do it all over again when 
the whole truth about The Issue is made clear. Edi¬ 
torial opinion, you understand, is an expression of 
thought that seeks to be right, and is ever conscious 
of the probability that it may prove wholly wrong. 
Which possibly accounts for the becoming meekness 
with which the Editor sacrifices himself in the public 
weal. 

We see, also, in passing, some of the big special 
writers of the staff, and we fail to discern the slightest 
mark of genius. It is something of interest to know 
that the foremost authority on American politics over 
yonder is actually writing something on the spot for 
immediate publication; that the boyish-looking chap 
with children flocking around his desk is the Jungle 
Editor, humorist and widely known war corre¬ 
spondent ; that the somewhat fat and smooth-faced 
person leaning against a desk in conversation with 
an inconsequential looking reporter is the inter¬ 
nationally known essayist, cynic and critic who is 
ranked high among modern writers; that yonder mid¬ 
dle-aged and studious ornament is the same man whose 


name appears over leading articles. When the guide 
mentions their names, the visitors gasp and exclaim: 
“Is that really So-and-So?” 

But, again, we are not so much concerned with 
special writers and geniuses. Over there at the desk 
hammering a typewriter is the fellow we’re following. 
He is the Reporter. The Ubiquitous, The Omni¬ 
present. The man of whom a noted editor said: 
“His business is to know where hell is going to break 
loose next and be there!” To him all doors are open, 
or are opened, or may be battered down in the interest 
of his public. He is a district reporter, or a general 
assignment man, or a court reporter, or what not. 
Wherever there is a source of news, there the Re¬ 
porter is; and when the cry of four alarms calls 
him, he is under the ropes with the fireman and often 
at points of greatest danger, getting the story for you. 


What is News? 

Briefly, it is the record of any event that interests 
readers/and the value of news generally is regulated 
by the number of readers it interests. Hence, because 
the unusual interests the greatest number, the best 
news is that which is unusual. A murder is news; a 
brutal murder is greater news; a murder accomplished 
unusually (i.e., the famous Guldensuppe murder, the 


[ 13 ] 



first of a series, in which the body was cut up and 
packed in a trunk) is even greater news, because of 
its degree of unusuality. The death of a citizen is 
news to his circle; the death of a Mayor is news to the 
whole city; the death of a Governor or Senator, pri¬ 
marily to his state or district; the death of a President 
is news to the country and, because of its interna¬ 
tional influence, to the world at large. The assassina¬ 
tion of a President in a peaceful country is propor¬ 
tionally greater news than the assassination of the 
President of a revolutionary country, because it is un¬ 
expected and doesn’t happen so often. 

As Charles Dana once put it: 

“If you see a man up a telegraph pole , 
that is not news; because men climb up tel¬ 
egraph poles every day; but if you see a 
telegraph pole climbing up a man , that’s 
news !” 

And the best reporter, by the same reasoning, is 
that reporter who is able to tell a story so unusually, 
or so simply, as to carry the reader’s interest irre¬ 
sistibly along. The reporter who can make his reader 
feel as though he has been on the scene witnessing 
the events described, is a reporter indeed; and by the 
same token he is rara avis. 

A classic among newspaper men is the story of 
a dispatch that started coming into the office of a 


[ 14 ] 


New York daily, from a field station at the scene of a 
great railroad wreck. Nobody knew who was send¬ 
ing the story, but it was a masterpiece. Word after 
word came over the wire, each one more gripping 
than its preceding mate; sentence after sentence, de¬ 
scribing in graphic detail the heart-rending scenes. 

“Give it the run of the paper!” ordered the 
night editor. “It’s the best news story ever written!” 

Suddenly the message stopped. A minute passed 
—two minutes—five; and then the night editor said 
to the operator: 

“Tell that damned fool to come on with his 
stuff r 

The operator clicked his key with the message. 
Soon there was a slow, measured reply. The operator 
turned to the editor. 

“The damned fool is dead!” he said, simply. 

Investigation proved that the man who sent the 
message was a staff reporter of the paper receiving 
it, that he had been a victim of the wreck, and that 
his first thought was of his duty to his public. Sit¬ 
ting in the field by the side of the track with both 
legs cut off, he began dictating to the operator, and 
his voice kept steadily ticking off the tragedy, until 
with his last breath, he signed off feebly and went 
Home, smiling happily as he fell into the doctor’s 
arms. 

That man was a Reporter! 


[ 15 ] 


Notice the semi-circular tables at the head and 
foot of the room. These are copy desks. The head 
of the desk sits in the center. Across the table are 
the copy-readers. At a desk in front is the city 
editor. At another, back to the left, the managing 
editor. It is the city editor’s business to keep the 
reporters after news, and it is the reporter’s business, 
when he goes after something, to bring it in. From 
the reporter, the story goes to the copy desk to be 
read carefully, corrected if necessary, and fitted to 
space proportionate to its news value. Here, the head¬ 
lines and sub-headings are written into the copy, and 
it is then shot by pneumatic tubes to the composing 
room, whence we shall presently follow it. 

News of the world comes into the editorial rooms 
by direct wire and the operators are tucked away in 
sound-proof rooms. They get the news of the Asso¬ 
ciated Press and other press services for The Sun- 


A Copy Desk at 
work preparing 
material for the 
Composing Room. 



[ 16 ] 



papers. Press service is one of journalism's modern 
necessities. Each organization is composed of all the 
newspapers subscribing to its support. All the news 
of any member paper belongs to the. association, and 
all members are entitled to the special news gathered 
by the association, from all quarters of the Earth. 
Foreign news is dumped with domestic into the New 
York offices, and there edited, proportioned to its 
value in the events of the day, and relayed by wire 
to all member newspapers. So The Sun and The 
Evening Sun get all the news of all the other news¬ 
papers, and of all the special agencies, engaged in 
furnishing information to the central organization. 
This means, in terms of actual fact, that during every 
hour of every day, The Sunpapers are in touch with 
the whole world by wires running directly into The 
Sun Building. 

It will interest you to have these facts concern¬ 
ing the Associated Press. At this writing there are 
in this country a few less than 1300 newspapers that 
get Associated Press service. This means that there 
are 1300 contributing editors of the Associated Press, 
and 80,000 reporters. The organization sends out 
75,000 words a day over 93,000 miles of leased tel¬ 
egraph wires, or wires under control of the associa¬ 
tion; and members pay in about $6,000,000 a year to 
gather and broadcast this news. 

Features other than news—that is, such things 


[ 17 ] 


as fiction stories, features for special positions, such 
as the Woman’s Page, comics, and a certain class of 
cartoons—are not originated by the individual news¬ 
papers in any great number. They are prepared for 
and circulated by newspaper syndicates that do noth¬ 
ing else. The newspaper in which a given feature 
appears has the exclusive use of that feature in its 
territory. Without syndicates, features in such ex¬ 
tensive use would be impossible, and the big Sunday 
newspaper would be equally out of the question, in 
the form in which you know it. Some newspapers 
syndicate, or sell to others their best general features, 
but all newspapers publish more or less strictly local 
features, which are readily distinguished from the 
others. 

While The Sunpapers use some of the best of 
these syndicated services, exclusive articles of par¬ 
ticular interest to Marylanders, by members of The 
Sun's staff of special writers and correspondents, give 
the papers the individuality and the local flavor so 
much appreciated by the readers of '‘Baltimore’s Own 
Newspapers.” 

The business of the Editorial Rooms, in brief, 
is to gather, select, edit and prepare for composition, 
the entire news, editorial and feature contents of the 
papers, and to send all the copy to the composing 
room, where it is set in type. 

In connection with editorial work, it is obvious 


[ 18 ] 


that a large newspaper must have an organized de¬ 
partment of information for its own use. Such a 
department rapidly develops into a service for the 
public, and with The Sunpapers this has happened so 
completely that The Sun Information Bureau is a 
general reference center engaging the constant atten¬ 
tion of a force of men and women who have become 
expert at locating, instantly and fully, information on 
all conceivable subjects. 

In the Information Bureau the shelves, drawers, 
files and pigeonholes are packed with books, clippings, 
references, cuts, miscellaneous data. Anything in the 
world one wishes to know can be found there, and if 
the subject is of later development than the published 
references, The Sun's people know just where to get 
the last word quickly. In consequence, investigators 
who formerly went to libraries and difficult places and 
dug for themselves have adopted the plan of calling 
up The Sun first. This is a most popular short cut 
with school teachers and advanced pupils, groups of 


A corner in The Sun 
Information Bureau — 
an indispensable work 
of research and 
record. 



[ 19 ] 



whom can be found any day in The Sun’s library, be¬ 
ing assisted in their work by the bureau’s competent 
staff. Every mail brings a stack of inquiries on 
everything from how to sew on a suspender button to 
the scientific explanation of the Aurora Borealis, 
and handling all this is a burden; but, to quote Ar¬ 
thur’s description of metal armor in Mark Twain’s 
fascinating “King Arthur’s Court,” “it is a proud bur¬ 
den and a man stands straight in it.” 

Every day The Sunpapers are filed column by col¬ 
umn in this department, more than 100,000 index 
cards a year with from five to ten subjects on each, 
being added to the cabinets for The Sun alone. The 
department also files all clippings and used half-tone 
cuts, and keeps on hand everything in the way of in¬ 
formation about men and events, which may be need¬ 
ed at any time in connection with news developments. 
Let anything of importance happen, and at once the 
Information Bureau gathers all possible data and pic¬ 
tures to cover that event’s development. Filed in the 
bureau are about 50,000 cuts and 75,000 photographs. 
These are periodically cleaned out, the “dead” subjects 
being destroyed and new ones taking their places. 

Now we will go to the photo-engraving depart¬ 
ment and see how illustrations are made. 


[ 20 ] 


Station “C” 


The Tho to -Engra ving T^oom 

ith the development of photo-telegraphy, we 
shall one day see a picture sent by wire, or 
radio, from Italy to Baltimore, of an earthquake in 
action; and we shall see it printed in one of The Sun- 
papers, perhaps, from three to four hours before it 
happens! Impossible as this may seem, the first 
prophecy depends upon scientific development of a 
workable idea; the second is accounted for by the 
difference in time at the two points. If a prominent 
man dies and his picture is needed here, it may be 
printed in Baltimore two or three hours before the 
hour of his death, and yet be perfectly post-mortem! 

The Sunpapers have their own photographers, of 
course, and their own artists, whose work is repro- 


A corner in the 
Engraving Room 
showing where The 
Suns photographs 
and dravoings are 
made into 
metal cuts 




[ 21 ] 



duced in the papers. The photographers use a 
Graflex camera, capable of snapping a perfect pic¬ 
ture in 1/1000 of a second, so that the fastest race 
horse is frequently caught with all four feet off the 
ground. Pictures taken late on the same morning are 
in The Evening Sun that afternoon; flash-lights taken 
at midnight are in The Sun before the banqueters in 
the picture have taken their morning’s cat-nap. Not 
long ago there was a church event in Easton, of 
which a picture was desired. It could not be obtained 
for publication the same day by train, boat or auto¬ 
mobile, so The Evening Sun sent a photographer in its 
own aeroplane, took the picture at 9 o’clock and 
printed it in The Evening Sun that day. 

The work of the artists is done on bristol board 
with crayon, or traced in pencil and finished in ink, 
and is then sent to the engraving room the same as 
photographs. 



The Sunpapers’ 
Commercial Art 
Department, 
where advertisements 
are illustrated for the 
readers of 
“store news.” 


[ 22 ] 



Each of The Sunpapers has its own staff of cam¬ 
era men and artists for editorial work—that is, to 
photograph and draw illustrations of the day’s news 
or features. In addition—and a very important addi¬ 
tion—there is a large staff of fast and competent 
artists who do nothing but illustrate advertisements, 
drawing endlessly at boots, shoes, hats, caps, furniture, 
suburban developments and every subject that is car¬ 
ried to the possible purchaser through the advertising 
columns. It is a Sun rule that advertising typography 
must conform to the editorial standard, and that illus¬ 
trations must be accurate and well drawn. So The 
Sunpapers help the advertisers in their commercial 
illustrating when necessary. 

Cuts (that is, reproductions in metal of illustra¬ 
tions) are made of zinc. Photographs are reproduced 
in what we call half-tone; drawings are done in lines, 
without screen—which will be explained presently. 
Now we’re ready to transfer a photograph to metal, 
so that it can be placed in the form with type and 
sent through the stereotyping process with the whole 
page, as described hereafter. 

First we provide a photographic plate, as follows: 
Take an ordinary piece of window glass and cover it 
with a coating of albumen, which is sticky. In simple 
terms, albumen is the white of an egg—that’s all. 

So we cover the glass with the white of an egg, 
or many eggs—it doesn’t matter. The albumen is just 


[ 23 ] 


a backing to hold the film together. Then, on top of 
that we put a coating of collodion, which is a prepara¬ 
tion of soluble gun-cotton with ether and alcohol, with 
certain chemicals varying with different methods. Col¬ 
lodion is the same kind of.stuff as a skin-forming 
preparation that you’ve used, perhaps, to cover a cut 
on your hand. It dries on your hand and makes a 
covering of skin. It does the same thing on the glass. 
Next, we dip this into nitrate of silver, which makes 
it sensitive to light, and there is your photographic 
plate. 

Our problem now is to transfer the photograph 
to this sensitized collodion coating and this is how 
it is done: 

The plate is placed inside the big camera you 
noticed. The photograph is fixed to a board in front 
of the lens at the proper distance, according to the 
size of the desired reproduction. A powerful light 
shines on the photograph and the camera proceeds to 
photograph, slowly but surely, just as any other cam¬ 
era photographs, with this exception: 

If a photograph were reproduced on metal just 
as you see it, and then inked and printed, the' result 
would be a solid smear of black ink. It must be 
broken up into a lot of pieces, or dots, which come 
out on the metal as small points, of about the con¬ 
sistency of a finger-nail file, to employ a familiar com¬ 
parison. Each of these dots prints a black point, but 


[ 24 ] 


each point is surrounded by the white paper in the 
background, and the combination of white paper and 
black dots produces the intermediate grays between 
white and black that make it possible for you to 
recognize a likeness. 

Now, to break up the photograph, there is placed 
in the camera, between the subject and the plate, a 
screen made as follows: Two fine pieces of glass 
are cut with diagonal lines, 60 to the square inch, and 
these lines are filled with an opaque substance which 
will not allow light to go through. Then the two 
pieces of glass are glued together so that the lines 
intersect at equal distances. The result is that in 
the squares between the intersections there are 3600 
clear spaces to the square inch. Through these the 
arc light or artificial sunlight passes, carrying the 
image of the subject in, as shown, 3600 pieces to the 
square inch. And these pieces are called dots. The 
screen is called a 60-line screen, which is about as 
fine as can be used for ordinary newspaper work. 

Next, the plate is developed and put through an 
intensifying solution of copper and nitrate of silver 
to give it a body. It is then dried and given a coat of 
rubber and collodion, so that it can be handled with¬ 
out tearing. It is now stripped from the glass and 
transferred to another piece of glass, with as many 
other subjects as the new glass will hold. This glass 
is called a “flat” and it enables us to make many cuts 
at one time. A piece of zinc plate is covered with a 


[ 25 ] 


printing solution of albumen and bichromate of am¬ 
monia. It is placed against the face of the flat with 
the negatives on it, and these two are fastened in a 
frame and set up against a powerful arc light, which 
transfers the images from the collodion negatives to 
the zinc plate. 

Now etchers’ ink is rolled over the images on the 
zinc plate, and on top of the ink dragon’s blood, a 
powder that resists acid, is sprinkled. When the plate 
is dusted off, this dragon’s blood sticks to the ink, and 
hardens. Dragon’s blood is made chiefly from the 
red resin and bark of the rattan palm of India and 
the Eastern Archipelago. The zinc plate is then 
placed in a bath of nitric acid, which eats into zinc. 
But it eats only into the unprotected zinc, so that the 
surface of zinc not needed in the picture is eaten 
away, and the zinc reproduction of the image is left 
standing up. When ink is rolled over the zinc plate 
and a proof pulled, only the image will print on the 
paper, because the rest of the metal has been eaten 
away and is not high enough to touch. This is what 
we call etching. 

After the zinc has been etched the cuts are sawed 
or routed apart and defects corrected by hand, and 
the cut then goes to the Composing Room and is put 
into the forms just the same as type, for the matrix. 
In reproducing drawings the process is the same, ex¬ 
cept that it is not necessary to use the screen. 


[ 26 ] 


In reproducing half-tones for the Photogravure 
Section of The Sunday Sun, the same general principle 
applies. The chief difference is that a very fine screen 
is used, the cuts are made on copper instead of zinc, 
and the printing must be done with a special ink, on 
special paper, and very slowly. It would be impos¬ 
sible to print a fine-screen half-tone on ordinary paper 
and with ordinary ink, at the rate of speed required 
in the daily publication of a newspaper. 

Station “D” 

The Qomposing Tpom 

ractically the entire third floor is occupied by 
the composing room. For the purpose of our 
journey we will go at once to the desk of the copy- 
chopper, who receives all copy from the editorial 
room and supervises its distribution to the linotype 
machines for composition. When copy is received at 
this desk it is cut up into what the printer calls ‘'takes” 
from the fact that each compositor in turn takes his 
piece of the copy to set in type. This system of cut¬ 
ting up copy in ‘flakes” makes it possible to set an 
entire story in very quick time, and at the moment of 
closing the “takes” are made so small that many ma¬ 
chines set the entire story almost instantaneously. 


[ 27 ] 


Each u take n is marked with a slug letter and num¬ 
ber as A-l, A-2, A-3, etc. When the compositor has 
set his copy he returns type and copy to an assembling 
bank, or desk, which is directly in front of the copy 
chopper. There, the “takes” are assembled in the 
order designated by the slug, on narrow trays called 
galleys. When the entire story and its headlines are 
on the galley, a proof is taken by inking the type and 
running a roller over a strip of paper against it. This 
proof is sent to the proof-readers, who read it back to 
copy and enter corrections in the margin. It then 
goes back to the bank, corrections are made, the “take” 
slugs are pulled out, and the galley is sent down the 
room to the stone, or table, where the page for which 
it is intended is being “made up” or put together in 
the form in which it appears in the newspaper. If 



The Linotype 
Machine—one of 
the marvels of the 
modern nezvspaper. 
Invented by the late 
Ottmar Mergenthalcr, 
a Baltimorean. 


I2S] 


you ever see a story in the paper with errors in it, there 
was not time to make all the corrections for the edi¬ 
tion and it was “railroaded” because of its importance 
as news. But you will find 
the corrections all made in 
the following editions. 

Now for the typesetting. 

In former days, all type was 
set by hand. Each letter or 
character was a separate 
piece of type. These types 
were kept in a case, and 
picked out and placed in a 
metal “stick” or holder set 
to any desired width. This 
hand-setting continued until 
Ottmar Mergenthaler of Bal¬ 
timore invented the linotype, 
now in universal use and as 
indispensable as any other of 
the modern machinery of 
newspaper making. 

The linotype is just what 
its name suggests: i.e., 

a machine that sets a line of type, instead of setting 
single characters. It does the work of from four to 
five men. It is operated substantially the same as a 
typewriter. At the top of the machine there is a large 
brass magazine fitted with slots which hold small brass 



Linotype machine 
with casting box 
open, showing how 
metal shoots out and 
casts line from 
matrices. 


[ 29 ] 


matrices, or dies. Each of these matrices bears the 
cut-in form of a letter or character. When the opera¬ 
tor touches a key on the board, the corresponding 
matrix is released from the magazine and falls down 
into a holder, which he calls an assembler, at his left 
hand, this holder being the width of the desired col¬ 
umn measure. When this holder is filled and spaced 
out, it forms a complete set of matrices for one full 
line. It passes down against a casting box, where 
hot metal takes the impression of the dies. This metal 
line comes out of the casting box and takes its place 
with lines of type, in its regular order, until all the 
copy has been set. 

Now watch the little brass matrices carefully, be¬ 
cause this is the most human part of the machine. 

As soon as the matrices have done their work, a 
long arm comes down and grabs them. Each matrix 
has, in a V-shaped end, fourteen sharp Teeth, on the 
principle of a Yale key. The arm takes them all back 
to the top of the machine and passes them over a 
grooved bar in front of a revolving spiral shaft which 
runs at the top of the magazine, from which they 
originally came. This grooved bar holds the matrices 
and the shaft carries them across until the notch 
combination of each matrix releases it and drops it 
back into its proper slot, when it is ready to fall into 
line again when the operator needs it. This ingenious 
distribution of matrices is always a wonderful thing 
to visitors, and it repays close examination. 


Now, we have seen copy written by the reporters 
and editors, arranged by the copy-readers, set by the 
linotypes, sent down to the assembling bank and proof¬ 
read and corrected. The next step is to put the type 
in page form, the way you see it in the paper. 

As you entered the Composing Room you noticed 
a long row of metal tables. These are called stones, 
from the fact that originally stone-topped tables were 
used for making up pages. On each table there is an 
iron form, or chase, as it is technically called. This 
chase is just slightly larger than the actual newspaper 
page, to allow side-sticks to tighten up the type form 
when it is all in place. Examine the forms closely, 
and you will see at the top the “carry line” and folio, 
and below that 
whole page made 
exactly as you 
it in the paper, 
is simply that 
the type matter 
been put into posil 
by the make-up n 
and each form 

you see it is a page The "^ ake ' u K sho ™ n . g , ■ 

J 1 ° assembling of pages prior to matrix 

of the paper. making. 




[ 31 ] 


Station “E’ 


The u zJ)Tonkey” Room 

' 77 ' ll the description in Station “D” has been of 
typesetting for the general news and editorial 
pages, in what is called body type—or the size of type 
which makes up the body of the paper. 

Now we come to a very important section of the 
composing room, known familiarly as the Monkey 
Room, where the monotype machines set display ad¬ 
vertisements, casting new type every day. In former 
times, advertisements were of the standing variety; 
that is, they were allowed to run with few changes 
for a long time. The result was that type in the form 
became mashed and broken, dirty and indistinct, and 
the average newspaper in those days was a very miser¬ 
able specimen of the printing art. In these days, the 
newspaper of the first class guards its typographical 
cleanliness zealously. 

You understand, of course, that The Sunpapers 
are not printed from the original type as set by the 
machines, but from plates made from matrices taken 
from the forms of type. The original type is melted 
every time it is used, and returned to be used again. 

In setting advertisements by monotype, the first 


[ 32 ] 


process is in a small railed section containing what 
looks like large typewriters and their operators. These 
machines puncture, or perforate, rolls of record paper 
exactly as records are perforated for a player piano. 
Every line is punctured just as it must come, and in 
the right size and style of type, by these perforating 
machines. The rolls then go into the little room in 
the rear—the Monkey Room. 



The machines in this room are little foundries. 
Each one is in fact a complete foundry in itself. 
The roll of record perforated 
by the other machine is fast¬ 
ened to the casting machine 
and passed down over holes 
through wdiich air blows— 
again, just the same as on the 
player piano. This air works 
two dogs connecting with a 
type die, or frame, which con¬ 
tains small holes at the end of 
which is. the die of a letter 
or character. Now, this type 
die is fixed over a melting 
pot from which there is a 
small nozzle which, when re¬ 
quired, shoots a jet of com¬ 
position metal up against the 
die and instantly casts that 


Perforating rolls 
for the 
Monotype 
foundry. 


[ 33 ] 


one letter in a single type. The newly-cast type leaps 
out into its place in the growing line of types, and 
the process is repeated until all the matter is set. 

As each line is completed, an automatic line hook 
reaches out behind the last letter and draws the entire 
line onto a tray into its proper position. A lifting 
metal rule raises and lets a column pusher slip in, 
push it forward and thus clear the space for the next 
line, and so the intelligent little foundry works on 
automatically, consuming everything that is fed to it 
and never wearying. 

After the monotype machines have finished, the 
type goes out into the “ad alley,” where all adver¬ 
tisements are handled, and make-up men there put it 
into the page forms with other matter, as described 
in the preceding chapter. 

The handling of advertising “copy” before it gets 
to the type-setting stage can be dismissed in a few 



Monotype foundry 
machine casting type 
from paper rolls. 


[ 34 ] 


words. You know, of course—the fact is so obvious 
that all must know it—that a newspaper does not de¬ 
rive its revenue from the sale of the paper, but from 
advertisements. The printed sheet is actually sold at 
far below the cost of the white paper. The cost of 
advertising to the buyer of space is regulated on the 
basis of so much money per thousand of circulation, 
governed also by local conditions. 

The advertising generally comes under the busi¬ 
ness manager, the subordinate heads being the man¬ 
agers of display advertising, of classified advertising 
and of national, or out-of-town advertising. Display 
advertising is everything local except classified; clas¬ 
sified is all that goes into classification groups; na¬ 
tional advertising relates to space bought by adver¬ 
tisers out of town seeking local patronage, the particu¬ 
lar example being the manufacturer of a product sold 
nationally through agencies in the local field. 


Classified Advertising 
Phone Room, where 
small advertisements 
are handled over wire. 



[ 35 ] 





The advertising salesmen present the newspaper’s 
circulation value to the advertiser and sell space on 
the basis of the newspaper’s volume and character of 
contact with the possible buyer. They suggest meth¬ 
ods of using space to get the best results, working 
closely with advertising agencies that make a specialty 
of representing users of newspaper space. 

Handling classified advertising includes advising 
the thousands of small users of space, particulaily 
people who use only a few lines for a shoit time, and 
who are unfamiliar with the proper wording of the 
“direct-appeal” message. In addition to- its regular 
force of salesmen, for the benefit of these small ad¬ 
vertisers, The Sunpapers maintain a separate telephone 
room with twenty-eight stations, at which carefully 
trained young ladies are kept constantly busy leceiv- 
ing advertisements and suggesting the most effective 
wording. 

Thousands of - appreciative readers are familiar 
with the valuable assistance rendered by the copy- 
writing, resort and travel, and educational informa¬ 
tion services supplied free of charge by the classified 
advertising department of The Sunpapers. 

Well, let’s follow the page of type and see what 
becomes of it- 


E36] 


Station “ F ” 

The Stereotyping department 

iJ s you were told in the introduction, before the 
invention of modern printing machinery all type 
was set by hand, and newspapers were printed on 
flat-bed presses direct from the type itself. That 
would be impossible today. 

This is a good place to tell you that all the metal 
used in setting type and casting plates is composed of 
81 per cent lead, 13 per cent antimony and 6 per cent 
tin. The lead is the soft element, allowing it to flow 
freely under heat; the antimony is the hardening ele¬ 
ment (and you may have heard of it from its use in 
Britannia metal and pewter, as a most important al¬ 
loy) and the tin gives the type that quite essential 
finish, and cutting edge, needed to produce a clear 
outline. This metal is heated to between 500 and 
600 degrees Fahrenheit. About 10 per cent is lost in 
handling, and all metal, when once used, is melted 
and used over again. 

At the last two preceding stations you saw the 
copy set into type and the type placed in chases or 
forms, on stones or tables. Now, you see the floor-men 
pull these rolling stones, one after the other, down the 
room to the roller and steam tables, where a page 
matrix will be made of each, this matrix to be sent 


[ 37 ] 


downstairs to the Autoplate, and there to be used in 
casting metal plates for the presses. 

Retain in your mind that the word “matrix, 
wherever used, means “form/ 
or “die,” and is a master from 
which any necessary number 
of casts may be made. The 
last matrix you saw was a 
little brass one to make lines 
of type. The one you are now 
examining is a full page 
matrix, not of brass, but of 
blotter and tissue joined with 
stereotyper’s paste, and about 
as thick as an average piece 
of cardboard, and very much 
like a large blotter in appear¬ 
ance. 

“Stereo” is a Greek 
prefix meaning “fixed,” 
or “solid,” and when we 
speak of stereotyping, 
we mean making a cast 
which fixes in solid usable 
form, the originally mov¬ 
able pieces of types, the 
lines of type, for in- 

stance, composing the A n Historic Page Plate- 
page as it is set in the ‘Woodrow Wilson Dead” 




Page Matrix of 
type, from which 
plate is cast. 


[ 38 ] 





linotype room. It would be impossible to fasten mov¬ 
able pieces to the cylinders of a perfecting press, and 
so one solid plate is made, and that plate is bolted 
down to the cylinders to defy all the discouragements 
of centrifugal force and to do its work as the inventor 
intended. 

The big reason for stereotyping is that as many 
plates for each page are needed as there are sets of 
cylinders running on the presses; and from a matrix 
as many plates can be made as required. 

Now, let’s go along and see how the stereotyping 
is done. 

Here we are at the steam tables. The form of 
type is brought down on its rolling table. It is shunt¬ 
ed off to a table under a heavy roller. A page matrix 
(the blotter and tissue just described) is placed over 
the face of the page of type. A blanket goes on top 
to equalize pressure. The whole thing is pushed un¬ 
der the roller, and comes out on the other side with 


Rolling the matrices. 
The face of the type 
is impressed into a 
matrix by a machine, 
and the matrix is 
then made 
permanent by 
steam heat. 



[ 39 ] 


the face of all the type firmly pressed into the matrix. 
Now it is taken further down the table to presses, 
just like the old-fashioned copy press. It is pushed 
under and the press is screwed tightly down. From 
80 to 100 pounds of steam keep the table and press 
hot. From 3 to 5 minutes is required to finish the 
impressing and drying of the matrix under the last 
process, and then it comes out. 

Now, the originally smooth matrix is a perfect, 
or nearly perfect, mold of the type page. Operators 
examine each matrix carefully for any possible faults, 
and correct the trouble. Then the matrix is sent 
through the chute to the Autoplate in the press room, 
away down in the basement, where plates are to be 
cast from it. 

The form, after a matrix has been made, goes 
back up the room for changes for a succeeding edition, 
or if it happens to be the last use for the day, the page 
is broken up, the type returned to the melting pot, 
and everything cleared away for the next day’s work. 

We will now follow the matrix downstairs and 
see it made into a plate. Remember the metal com¬ 
position—lead, tin and antimony; and when you come 
near the melting pot of the Autoplate, remember also 
the temperature of the metal, between 500 and 600 
degrees Fahrenheit. A finger curiously dipped into the 
melting pot might demonstrate just what 500 to 600 


[ 40 ] 


degrees Fahrenheit is, but no visitor has thought it 
necessary to doubt. 

The Autoplate stands at the entrance to the press 
room in the basement. It is there because it would 
be impossible to convey metal plates any distance to 
the presses, and make necessary time. Getting out a 
newspaper, at the hour of going to press, is always an 
anxious moment, and seconds will answer problems of 
catching trains and making scheduled delivery into 
the homes. 

In the Autoplate, you first see the large oval 
melting pot. On either end, a semi-cylindrical cast¬ 
ing box. In front, a separate piece of machinery, the 
cooling and trimming outfit. Now, watch the matrix 
that you have followed downstairs from the compos¬ 
ing room. It is placed in the casting box, which is 
closed on it. A lever is pulled, opening a vent and 
filling the space over the matrix with hot composition 
metal. In 19 seconds a bell rings, the casting box 


The Autopiate in 
action , casting off 
stereotyped plates 
to be affixed to the 
cylinders of the 
presses. 



[ 41 ] 


opens, the shaft or core against which the plate was 
cast revolves, and out comes the metal plate. A saw 
automatically trims off the edges—and stand back, 
please, or the flying pieces will burn your clothing! 
Men gloved with leather palm-pieces grab the plates 
as they come out and place them quickly on the cool¬ 
ing and trimming machine. This machine automat¬ 
ically trims the sides and bottoms of the plates to 
make them fit the press cylinders evenly, and then 
passes them down under a spray of water and over 
brushes that remove the slightest particle of loose 
metal. After that, floor-men pick them up, rush them 
to the presses and lock them in place. 

Here we are, ready for the starter! 

That is the plate of all plates. 

It is the last one to come down. 

It is the page that fairly screams: “When you 
get me on, let her go!” 

It is the thriller of the press room, the page that 
starts feverish life in the mountains of metal waiting 
for the urge of electric current. Will we be on the 
street first with an edition, or will our competitors 
beat us? It is the starter that answers. 


Station “G” 


The Tress T^oom 

HE Sunpapers have four double sextuple Hoe cyl¬ 
inder presses, or a total of twenty-four presses, 
and they will each turn out 34,000 average papers in 
an hour or 136,000 papers an hour in all. There they 
are, standing like battleships in the long press room, 
each press weighing a hundred tons. Even with their 
rapid delivery the presses cannot keep up with the 
growing circulation of The Sunpapers, and the equip¬ 
ment is now being increased. 

Whoever invented presses (and that will always 
be disputed) did something that turned civilization 
into rich pastures of progress, to graze at will. But 
to Hoe and his contemporaries the newspaper must 
give the achievement of perfecting the press, and mak¬ 
ing it possible to print a newspaper as large, for in¬ 
stance, as The Sunday Sun, in quantities sufficient to 
supply a great and constantly increasing demand. If 
we had time or space to describe the clumsy efforts of 
the original press to turn out a paper, the comparison 
would make you think, and think hard. It would be 
the comparison of the first automobile with the latest 
speed-car. 

“What town is this?” asked the old-time motorist 
of yesterday as he passed through. 


[ 43 ] 


‘'What town WAS that?” asks the speeding 
motorist of today; and there is the difference between 
the old-time press and the presses used by The Sun. 

Come down close and look into the heart of the 
presses. Observe that each section is a complete press 
in itself, with its own equipment of cylinders to hold 
the plates that you have just seen cast by the Auto¬ 
plate at the entrance of the press room. Now the 
pressmen bring the plates, which you will remember 
were cast in a semi-cylindrical form, and lock them 
securely to the cylinders of the presses. 

What we need now is to put ink on the plates 
and run paper over them. 

First, glance at the galleries of the press room, 
piled high with rolls of paper weighing from 1100 to 
1500 pounds each. Then notice the rolls hoisted into 
position at the ends of the presses. The end of each 
roll is fed into what is called the web, roughly a sue- 

A peep into the 
interior of the Hoe 
cylinder press. 

2266 newspapers 
can be turned out in 
one minute, or 
about 38 a 
second. 



[ 44 ] 


cession of rollers and cylinders that catch the paper 
and pull it through the whole press, over and under 
the form of type. Now, we press an electric button 
and start the machinery. The cylinders move. As 
the plate cast from the matrix and locked to the cyl¬ 
inders turns under it comes in contact with rollers 
covered with ink, this ink being sprayed by a force 
pump from fountains in the base of the press. Thor¬ 
oughly inked, the plate is carried back up by the cyl¬ 
inder and comes in contact with the paper, which is 
held down .to the plate by an impression cylinder cov¬ 
ered with felt blanket, and under this pressure the 
page is transferred to paper, and there you are. 

As the paper passes through the press it comes 
down over folding devices, under knives, and out 
at the end, printed, folded, cut and counted, into an 
automatic conveyor which carries the complete papers 
to the mailing room. Every fiftieth paper “kicks out” 
from the rest as it reaches the conveyor, so that people 
receiving the papers in the mailing room take them off 
the conveyor in fifties. Without this automatic de¬ 
vice it would be impossible to count papers fast enough 
to pack and ship them. 

That briefly is the story of the presses. The rest 
of the story is in the thrill and human interest of 
watching them whirring with a deafening noise, and 
seeing the alert attendants caring for tension on the 
paper, that it does not break; making ready a roll to 


[ 45 ] 


take place of the one now nearly exhausted; on the qui 
vive for lightning action that may be required by any 
emergency. 

We shall follow the paper to the mailing room, 
now that it has been printed. But first, how is the 
paper circulated? 

Station “H” 

The (Circulation Department 

Tift ithout circulation a newspaper would be value- 
less to the community and to the advertiser. 
No department is more important than the sales de¬ 
partment, in any business. To produce is necessary, 
but to distribute the product is frequently necessary 
plus. Which reminds us of the time when Eugene 
Field, then publishing a small newspaper, suddenly 
burst into bitter tears as he looked out the window at 
a passing funeral procession. 

“What’s the matter, ’Gene?” asked his business 
partner. “Friend of yours?” 

“No,” said Field, wiping his eyes and sobbing as 
though his heart would break, “but a thought came 
over me—just for a moment I thought it might be our 
subscriber.” 

In the city, The Sunpapers have their bulk of cir¬ 
culation directly into the homes by exclusive carrier 


[ 46 ] 


service. The supplementary distribution by newsboys 
who sell on the street, and who are organized into dis¬ 
tricts supervised by agents in automobiles, is so evi¬ 
dent to all who walk that it needs no explanation. 
But Sun Carrier Service is peculiar to itself, and it 
will pay us to take a little peep behind the scenes. 

Beginning with the statement that the city cir¬ 
culation of The Sunpapers is essentially by home de¬ 
livery you will be interested in knowing how it is done. 
In the first place, the city and immediate suburbs are 
divided into groups of blocks, and each group is a 
Carrier Route. There are 112 such routes, covering 
every nook and corner of Baltimore and environs. 
Each route is managed by a Carrier who employs his 
own help, buys his papers at the Carrier rate and 
serves them at the advertised rate, and who has in¬ 
vested money for the privilege and is therefore sure 
to do everything he can to please his customers and 


The only thing of 
its kind in the 
world. 

A modern filing 
device housing the 
names and 
addresses of the 
Sunpaper 
subscribers, 
corrected weekly. 



[ 47 ] 



increase the number of them. The privilege is at all 
times in control of The Sun and is guarded jealously, 
for the slogan of the Circulation Department is: “Sun 

Carrier Service Must Be 
Absolute ServiceA 

The Route Carrier is 
in immediate touch with 
the office, through a sys¬ 
tem which includes a Serv¬ 
ice Desk for orders and 
complaints. During a con¬ 
siderable period a check 
was kept on this desk, and 
with the city-wide distri¬ 
bution full of points of con¬ 
tact where anything might 
The Sunpapers go Home by happen, the complaints 
Exclusive Carrier Service. average d only three a day! 

The carrier, whenever there is a complaint, receives 
immediate notice and gives the investigation and cor¬ 
rection his personal atttention. 

The Sun Carrier is not a boy. He is a grown 
man, with money invested in a going enterprise, and 
to it he gives his entire attention. He handles The 
Sunpapers exclusively, does practically all of his own 
collecting and comes in contact with his customers 
personally instead of by agents. The carriers have 
an organization—The Sun Route Owners’ Association 



[ 48 ] 



—which meets at stated intervals for consideration of 
their mutual interests. They are represented by a 
Carrier Council of Seven, which confers as occasion 
requires with circulation executives. An annual ban¬ 
quet is a feature of their social interest, and it is 
always an affair of note. 

Considering the small price of an individual news¬ 
paper, it might be interesting to you to know that 
on the basis of actual money invested, the privilege of 
distributing The Sunpapers into the homes would capi¬ 
talize well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
With such a system, directly responsible to the pub¬ 
lishing concern for its results, it is no wonder that 
The Sun papers can and do go into the homes not only 
in large numbers, but regularly and with very little 
complaint. 

Circulating the papers in the country generally is 
a matter of transportation, chiefly; but frequently 
train schedules are deranged, blizzards tie up traffic, 


Reliefograph, which 
makes name plates 
for the Dick mailer. 



[ 49 ] 


and things happen that keep the out-of-town force 
working overtime. Changes in addresses, expirations, 
renewals, starting and stopping temporary orders dur¬ 
ing vacation season—these things are the details that 
have to be watched constantly. 

Until about five years before the time of this 
writing, names and addresses of mail subscribers, out- 
of-town dealers, carriers and news agents in the city 
were set in type and kept on trays or galleys. From 
these, proofs were pulled, and these 
proofs sent to the mailing room, 
where they were put into a device 
known as the Dick mailer—a hand 
machine that cuts and pastes labels 
from the proof or “strip” onto the 
wrappers. 

This accumulation of type 
amounted to between three and 
four tons, which was not only a 
great weight on the floor, but which 
had to be picked up and handled 
every time a proof was pulled. 
Today, with the Pollard - Ailing 
mailing system, the same work is 
done cleanly with a total weight of 
only 336 pounds against the several 
tons of type handled under the old 
system. And there is a proportion¬ 
ate saving of working space, which 



Electric proof er, 
which prints 
name plates on 
paper strips to 
fit the 
Dick mailer. 


[SO] 


in these days of adapting expansion to limited room is 
of first importance. 

There are two machines in the mailing system: 
The reliefograph, which makes name plates, and the 
electric proofer, which prints them off on strips to 
fit the Dick mailers. The first machine is operated 
by young ladies, with a simple keyboard, and they can 
punch four lines each into the name plates of alumi¬ 
num at the rate of 250 an hour. These name plates 
are so made that they can be swiftly, with one deft 
movement, linked together in a continuous chain. This 
chain, or reel, is then put on the electric proofer, 
which will ink the plates and run them over proof 
paper at the rate of 30,000 name plate impressions 
an hour. 

Operators work almost continuously correcting 
these reels by pulling out “dead” plates and substi¬ 
tuting “live” ones, to keep up with changes on the 
mailing list which come from the desk of the Country 
Circulator as they are received from individual sub¬ 
scribers and agents. 

You who have been through the plant take cir¬ 
culation for granted. Of course The Sunpapers circu¬ 
late. Otherwise they would not exist. But you want 
to see them actually go out? Very well, let’s visit the 
mailing room. 


[ 51 ] 


Station “ 1 ” 


The ^Mailing Toom 

& here is not time to linger in the mailing room. It 
is not a place where lingering is in the atmos¬ 
phere. Long before the presses are ready to deliver, 
the men at the tables have run off their wrapping 
sheets—the individual wrappers, the club wrappers, 
dealers, stores, boys, carriers. Daily corrections are 
made in the number of papers for each wrap, and 
this has all to be done in advance. 

Outside the grilled partition, newsboys are gath¬ 
ering. And a remarkable fact about boys is that twen¬ 
ty of them can pile into space intended by Nature 
for six, without the least apparent discomfort. They 
hear the bell ring. They have bought their tickets. 
The papers are coming up, and with a rush they cover 
whatever small spaces there may be between them and 
mash each other to jelly in the line which is not a line, 
but a mass—a heterogeneous conglomerate of America 
in the raw. 

Backed up against the curb on Charles street are 
huge trucks to take packs to carriers, to trains, to 
steamer landings, to wholesale stores. With them, a 
battery of smaller motors and light trucks used in the 
distribution of papers to newsboys, in all parts of the 
city. We are speaking now, of course, of The Evening 


[ 52 ] 


Sun. There is not so great a rush in the morning, be¬ 
cause the town is not so much alive when the paper 
comes out then. 

With the first paper up from the press room on 
the conveyor, a babel of yells starts with the newsboys 
waiting at the window. Eager hands are thrust 
through the opening up to the shoulders. A mad 
scramble to push one place forward in the "line” 
starts, and continues until the last boy has been sup¬ 
plied. And as fast as they get their papers the young¬ 
sters are in the street full tilt, reckless of collision and 
as spirited as the hottest contestants in a football 
game. With the first boy’s cry the street is alive. 
Hands go into pockets in all directions, the racing 
salesmen stopping just long enough to pick up custom¬ 
ers on their way to their favorite corners or stands. 

Meantime, the mailing room helpers have started 
wrapping, and fast light trucks speed away for the 
first trains that must be caught. Supervisors who 

A corner of the 
Mailing Room 
showing where 
papers are zvrapped 
and dispatched to 
distribution points 
and to carriers. 



[ 53 ] 


have charge of newsboy districts hustle their bundles 
to their cars and are away, and as fast as fifties can be 
picked up from the tables and wrapped and tied, car¬ 
rier bundles are hurried to the sidewalk, there assorted 
by the dispatcher, and loaded into the waiting trucks. 
Each truck, as its route is completed, takes the right- 
of-way through traffic and goes about the most im¬ 
portant business a truck has—getting the latest pos¬ 
sible paper to the carrier at the earliest possible mo¬ 
ment. Almost without stopping, the carrier trucks 
toss bundles off at designated corners, where sub¬ 
carriers pounce on them eagerly, and then begins the 
systematic, thoroughly organized distribution into the 
homes of the great city field. 

Upstairs in the editorial room, while the mailing 
room is clearing the newspapers, some important 
story may be running. Something new may break. 
Five minutes after going to press there may be an 


A glimpse of the 
Sun's battery of 
automobiles and 
automobile trucks 
hauling newspapers 
away for carrier 
distribution and 
mailing. 



[ 54 ] 


important development. Instantly the mechanical de¬ 
partments are notified: 

“Get ready for a make-over !” 

The changes are made in the form of type, new 
matrices are sent down and new plates cast, and in 
the midst of the “run” the presses are stopped for a 
moment, the old plates are taken off, the new ones 
put on, and away they go again, always striving to get 
into the earliest possible edition the latest possible fact 
of importance in the day’s news. 

It is always like that, and all through the plant 
the same. Perhaps you have heretofore thought of a 
newspaper as two cents’ worth of reading matter; or in 
combination delivered to your home, you regard it as 
“Thirteen Sunpapers for 25 cents a week.” But when 
you have gone through the plant, after you have read 
this story of a little journey, you get a new slant. 
Then perhaps, you understand that the newspaper 
is not a mere printed sheet: it is an institution. 

Goodbye! Qome Again! 


[ 55 ] 



[ 56 ] 


18 06—ARUNAH SHEPERDSON ABELL—1888 
FOUNDER OF THE BALTIMORE SUN 




The Beginning of The 


From Ponies and Pigeons to Telegraph 

I N this second edition it is fitting to include a brief reference 
to the genesis of The Sunpaper, in view of its valuable con¬ 
tribution to the development of international news gathering 
and the organization of newspaper enterprise. 

Arunah Sheperdson Abell was a New England printer, 
who served his apprenticeship in the office of the Providence 
Patriot. After serving his time he went by stagecoach to 
Boston, where he worked, and afterward to New York, where 
he met. William M. Swain and Azariah H. Simmons, both 
practical printers, who were destined to become his partners. 

On February 20th, 1836, these three men signed papers 
which established the Philadelphia Public Ledger. Then Mr. 
Abell came to Baltimore and, in spite of contrary advice, per¬ 
suaded his partners that there was room in this city for a penny 
newspaper against the six-penny journals then being published. 
So on May 17th, 1837, The Sun was established as a four-page 
paper of four columns, each page being about half the size of 
the present Sunpaper. At that time Baltimore was an unpaved 
village of 85,000 population and 15,000 homes. 

Because it was strictly a newspaper for the gathering of 
news, The Sun’s circulation grew immediately to what was then 
an enormous figure. Business expanded so that in 1851 The 
Sun moved into its own building, which was the first iron build¬ 
ing constructed anywhere in the world, and which stood until 
it was destroyed in the fire of 1904. 

It is not necessary to go into the historical detail by which 
The Sun fell exclusively into Mr. Abell’s hands in 1864. The 
purpose of this sketch is rather to show the part of The Sun 



in the development of newsgathering organization. In Decem¬ 
ber, 1838, Mr. Abell brought the President’s message from 
Washington by swift pony express. He had waiting forty-nine 
printers who began setting type immediately, and in two hours 
The Sun was on the street, beating all the newspapers in the 
country by two days. 

Mr. Abell then established a pony express between Boston 
and Baltimore, a distance of 400 miles, to bring foreign news 
and news of the northern port to The Sun. In those days all 
foreign news came in by way of Boston. The Sun’s enterprise 
in establishing this overland service forced the New York 
papers in 1844 to adopt the same method. Express news serv¬ 
ice by steamboat and train was established to connect with the 
ponies, and finally The Sun joined a movement to charter a 
pilot boat which ran to Liverpool and gathered foreign news 
for this country. 

When the Mexican War attracted the attention to the South 
in 1846, The Sun established an exclusive overland express of 
“sixty blooded horses,” which ran between Baltimore and New 
Orleans, and in spite of protest by the Postoffice Department, 
developed a mail service that beat the Great Southern Mail 
by thirty hours. It required six days to cover the distance, at 
a cost of $1,000 a month. This grew into the organization on 
November 29th, 1847, of the Southern Daily Pony Express. 

Up to this time horses had been taking the place now oc¬ 
cupied by telegraph, cable and radio. At about the same time 
The Sun trained 500 carrier pigeons to fly with news between 
New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, and these 
pigeons were continued in active service until the telegraph 
system reached practical development. 

It is not surprising that a newspaper so actively interested 
in developing rapid communication should be found enthusiasti¬ 
cally backing the next step forward. In 1837 Samuel F. B. 
Morse, of Baltimore, attempted to get a bill through Congress, 
enabling the establishment of his magnetic telegraph line be¬ 
tween Baltimore and Washington. The bill was left in com¬ 
mittee until in 1842, five years later, The Sun became interested, 


[ 58 ] 


backed Professor Morse, and rendered valuable service in in¬ 
fluencing the passage of the bill, which appropriated $30,000. 
The telegraph line was compelled May 24th, 1844, and The Sun 
used it regularly in order to encourage the enterprise. On 
May 11th, 1846, a Presidential message was sent over it exclu¬ 
sively to The Sun, and this incident led to the establishment of 
the telegraph system in France. Mr. Abell and his associates 
then joined interest with Professor Morse, and The Sun and 
the Public Ledger and their friends financed a line to Philadel¬ 
phia, which was opened April 21st, 1846. 

It is not the purpose of this sketch to follow The Sun 
through any of its later activities. It is sufficient to call atten¬ 
tion to its contribution to newspaper development at a time 
when journalism in any stage was a most difficult undertaking. 
The Sun was the first newspaper to use rotary presses, without 
which a modern newspaper could not be published at all. It 
was the first to use electricity for lighting purposes, and it was 
the first in its field to use an aeroplane in gathering news. 

And so far as the writer of this knows, it is the first to 
give its friends, in connected form, such a peep behind the 
scenes as this description of “The Making of a Newspaper.” 


[ 59 ] 














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